Subj:
Date: 12/16/2000 10:48:44 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: tlaney@pressenter.com (Tom Laney)
To: ...
Hi folks,
I would like to share a few thoughts with you all about a friend, Carl
Boye, who died Thursday. Most of you don't know Carl but he was an
important guy to all of us, to the real labor movement, the real UAW, to
our families and communities because he spent his entire life believing in
workers and doing his best to kick the capitalists' greedy ass.
It seems like many, many years ago, I considered joining a socialist party
and went to see an old friend, Carl, to talk about it. I was a young union
rep and frustrated with the uaw's turn to company unionism and I was
thinking that lineworkers weren't too hip to the change; that socialists
were and that maybe I could find a little more support there.
Carl was really opposed to capitalism and as much in love with working
class people as he was disgusted with big business. He worked for Ford
before the UAW and was the second president of my Local back in the
mid-40's. He was a tough, tough old UAW-CIO type guy who was happiest
mixing it up on picketlines when he wasn't driving the bosses nuts at the
St. Paul Ford Assembly Plant.
Maybe the CIO type was patterned around Carl or certainly patterned after
guys like Carl who believed workers ought to run the show.
He told me he thought going that socialist route was a waste of time even
though he was interested in socialist ideas. He never thought communists or
socialists really cared about people. He saw them as people who thought
themselves more intelligent and better than us. Carl was verrrrry big on
common sense as coming from common workers. He was also devoted to
democracy and that meant democracy from the shop floor up. He told me that
as far as he could see my politics came off the plant floor, that what I
was good at was listening and working with lineworkers and "sticking to
your guns" which he meant as the lineworkers' guns. He poked a big finger
in my chest and said: "YOU DON'T SELL OUT!" I didn't talk back much to Carl
either. I always thought he meant that sellout statement two ways, as an
observation but also a command - that I didn't sell out but it was an order
too, that I better not ever even think of selling out. Much later he told
me that I couldn't ever sellout because I was too close to the workers. It
was one of the nicest things anyone ever said about me in my entire life
because he meant it in the best way.
In Carl's democratic view, if you followed it, you could never sell out,
ever, because you always stayed a worker. He told me he thought my politics
were better than any party system because I was still willing to fight for
what I believed in when I was a lineworker. He taught me to always look for
the best Union people in our plant, to stay close to them, to listen,
argue, fight with them even, over everything we thought was important to
make the Union stronger. "There's your party, the workers," Carl said. "You
don't need to go to some goddam party headquarters to have someone else
tell you what to think. Stick with the best people. You will always find
that the better the person, the better the Union man. [Carl worked in our
plant when there were no women.] Just listen. They'll tell you what to do.
Just listen, but don't ever waste time with the company stooges - they
don't have it. You can't change 'em. They're the enemy, you have to fight
'em."
He taught me to never pay too much attention to big shots - never to pay
heed to company bigshots. And, only seldom to the UAW bigshots. He could
never accept that the UAW had become so dismal as to freeload in Vegas with
corporate execs and enter company unionism. It was so far away from his
experience and everything he valued so deeply about the UAW that he just
tuned it out. It was like,
"What's going on in the plant?"
"The bargaining committee's in Palm Springs with the company."
"No. What's going on in the plant?"
"They're speeding up the line and cutting jobs."
"What?!!!"
Carl had mucho health problems. His legs were paralyzed and he spent the
last 25 years in a wheel chair. Since he had retired 2 years before I
started at Ford I had only heard legendary stuff about his life in the
plant. Things like running a whole heat of glass onto the floor when a line
foreman tried to ignore him on a grievance. They fired him for that but he
never made it as far as the front door because the glass workers said,
"Might as well fire us too because we ain't working without Carl." Carl
just saw himself in his committeeman days as a guy who simply worked for
the lineworkers. He didn't set out to "lead" them. The relationship was
that THEY led HIM. The lineworkers were his boss and the Ford Motor Co.
could go screw itself on everything.
I met Carl at a Saturday meeting of the Progressive Roundtable; he was the
bright spot in a fairly large assembly of Twin Cities liberal sillies. I
introduced myself after the meeting and he actually pulled himself up out
of the wheelchair and propped himself on the table with one hand and
grabbed mine with the other. "You're Tom Laney? Boy, have I heard alot
about you - all bad!" Not sure what was coming next because Carl was pretty
close to some uaw porkers who hated my guts, I asked if we could get
together and talk Union? And that began one of the terrific friendships of
my life with this guy I will be telling people about as long as I live.
When the porkchoppers in the uaw forced a big political division in our
Local over support for the P-9rs, Carl never wavered. His directness in
telling everyone that P-9 support was not optional but a UNION obligation
cost him some old friends, which I think is a heavy price to pay for
principle in your late days. But he was solid. Just incredible in his
integrity and sense of duty which always included loud, animated lectures
to ANYONE who saw it otherwise.
Five years ago, when my first granddaughter, Laney Erin Henehan, was born, I
took her to meet Carl. He wasn't doing too well that day but it was
unbelievable the way his eyes lit up with Laney! He held her and announced,
"She's got something!" I think it's probably Union organizing she's got, at
least that's where I'm pushing her. I'll tell her all about Carl in a few
years. But already, she sits next to a kid on the kindergarten bus who the
other kids are shunning for whatever reason and has just told a bully to
leave a friend alone. There's a connection between Laney and Carl which is
just that connection that Carl always explained as "most guys are pretty
good." He meant women too.
Some weeks ago I think a machinist wrote here, or no it was Richard Mellor
- that the Union leaders like Lewis and Mortimer and Thomas and Green and
Murray and some others from years ago were such "giants" compared to what we
have today. And isn't it true that with all their faults that they were
giants when compared to the corporate pimps masqued as "labor leaders" today?
But isn't it really true that they were giants because they understood that
they worked for the workers and their greatness was only a reflection of
the lineworkers and the farmers and steelworkers and fitters and cafeteria
workers and miners and drivers and teachers and everyone else who works and
is allowed a fair chance to express themselves and thereby define the action?
I think that is absolutely true. It is the most important truth Carl taught
me and the most important truth in understanding the need to revolt against
this company-union labor movement we've been saddled with and the need for
starting up the road to real Unions and a just society RUN BY US!
In 1987, my Local honored Carl with a big plaque and annual Carl Boye
Awards to the people in our local who best typify Solidarity principles. I
guess the leaders decided that this is too radical an idea and they no
longer observe this. In making the award back then, the Local quoted Martin
Luther King in
saying that the test of courage doesn't come in times of comfort and
convenience but in times of turmoil and controversy. We said that Carl
never had trouble with the choices or the controversy. He stood up always
for equality and solidarity and democracy. It was pretty cool that we
recognized his constancy as a worker and his courage as large as King's.
His daughter Mick (Marguerite) told me in a long talk last nite, where we
seemed to alternately laugh and cry, amongst all the stories from Carl an to Carl busting some knuckles on the line to Carl
hanging out with bigshots but never being affected by them, that Carl will
be buried near Lansing, Iowa next Friday. There will be no prayers, no
service, no memorial. She says that Carl's religion was the Union and this
is the way he wanted it.
I said Carl had a life-long love affair with his family and Ford workers.
"Mick" said I had it backwards.
Whatever, I am sure that God will bless this wonderful man.
I did not mean to be so lengthy. I'll be writing something more organized
later on but I needed to do this just now.
I do mean to let you all know that this good man's life has made things
better for my kids and grandkids and yours too. Carl really did change the
world!
I just wanted everyone to know about him.
Merry Christmas to all,
Tom